Become a Patron!

Episodes

Oct. 21, 2024

Intimate Lives of International Communism

Guest: Maurice Casey on the “lost world” of international communism in his book, Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism’s Forgotten Radicals published by Footnote Press.

Listen to the Episode
Oct. 14, 2024

Gulag Memory in Russia’s Far North

Guest: Tyler Kirk on After the Gulag: A History of Memory in Russia's Far North published by Indiana University Press.

Listen to the Episode
Oct. 7, 2024

The Russia That Was Lost

Guest: Pavel Khazanov on The Russia That We Have Lost: Pre-Soviet Past as Anti-Soviet Discourse published by the University of Wisconsin Press.

Listen to the Episode
Sept. 30, 2024

Free Marc Fogel!

Guest: Ambassador Eric Rubin on the efforts to free Marc Fogel, an American serving 14 years in the Russian prison for possessing 17 g of medical marijuana.

Listen to the Episode
Sept. 23, 2024

A New History of Northern Eurasia

Guests: Marina Mogilner and Ilya Gerasimov on their new textbook, A New Imperial History of Northern Eurasia, 600–1700: From Russian to Global History published by Bloomsbury.

Listen to the Episode
Sept. 9, 2024

The Sound of Socialism, Part 3

Guest: Andrea Bohlman on the curious history of the sound postcard in People's Republic of Poland.

Listen to the Episode
Sept. 3, 2024

Women in Russian Politics

Guest: Valeria Umanets on women in municipal governance in the Soviet Union and under Putin.

Listen to the Episode
Aug. 26, 2024

Illiberalism and Civil Society in Hungary

Guest: Daniel Mikecz on Civil Movements in an Illiberal Regime: Political Activism in Hungary published by Central European University Press.

Listen to the Episode
Aug. 19, 2024

The Sound of Socialism, Part 2

Guest: Matthew Kendall on his article “Room for Noise in Soviet Sound Recording” in the Winter 2023 issue of the Slavic Review.

Listen to the Episode
Aug. 12, 2024

The Sound of Socialism, Part 1

Guest: Gabrielle Cornish on the sound of Lenin's voice and other sounds of socialism.

Listen to the Episode
Aug. 5, 2024

The Eastern International

Guest: Masha Kirasirova on The Eastern International: Arabs, Central Asians, and Jews in the Soviet Union's Anticolonial Empire published by Oxford University Press.

Listen to the Episode
July 29, 2024

The Soviet Bid to Run the World

Guest: Sergey Radchenko on To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power published by Cambridge University Press.

Listen to the Episode
July 1, 2024

The Rise and Fall of Yevgeny Prigozhin

Guests: Anna Arutunyan and Mark Galeotti on their new book Downfall: Prigozhin, Putin, and the New Fight for the Future of Russia published by Penguin.

Listen to the Episode
June 24, 2024

Russians in Latvia

Guest: Kevin Platt on Border Conditions: Russian-Speaking Latvians Between World Orders published by Cornell University Press.

Listen to the Episode
June 17, 2024

Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip

Guest: Lisa Kirschenbaum on Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip published by Cambridge University Press.

Listen to the Episode
June 10, 2024

Soviet Afghan War and Islam

Guest: Vassily Klimentov on A Slow Reckoning: The USSR, the Afghan Communists, and Islam published by Cornell University Press.

Listen to the Episode
June 3, 2024

Populist Elitism in Russia and the US

Guest: Alexandar Mikhailovic on the unlikely convergence of the American and Russian far-right.

Listen to the Episode
May 20, 2024

Soviet Industrial Ecology

Guest: Elena Kochetkova on wood, forests and industrial ecology in the Soviet Union.

Listen to the Episode
May 13, 2024

Everyday War in Donbas

Guest: Greta Uehling on the ethics of care in Everyday War: The Conflict over Donbas, Ukraine published by Cornell University Press.

Listen to the Episode
May 6, 2024

Sugarland

Guest: Artan Hoxha on his new book, Sugarland: The Transformation of the Countryside in Communist Albania published by Central European University Press.

Listen to the Episode
April 29, 2024

Citizen Poet

Guest: Russian poet Dmitrii Bykov on the War in Ukraine, the role of art in politics, satire, his poisoning in 2019, protest, love and family.

Listen to the Episode
April 22, 2024

Baku Oil and the Soviet State

Guest: Sara Brinegar on her book The Power and Politics of Oil in the Soviet South Caucasus: Periphery Unbound, 1920-29 published by Bloomsbury.

Listen to the Episode
April 15, 2024

Gleaning for Communism

Guest: Xenia Cherkaev on her book Gleaning for Communism: The Soviet Socialist Household in Theory and Practice published by Cornell University Press.

Listen to the Episode
April 8, 2024

The Tunguska Mystery

Guest: Andy Bruno on his new book Tunguska: A Siberian Mystery and its Environmental Legacy published by Cambridge University Press.

Listen to the Episode